PlayStation 5 Players Confused After Sony Introduces Quiet DRM Checks

Sony has quietly added online DRM checks for newly-launched PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games purchased from March 2026 onward, and the company has yet to explain what the change means for players.

The shift was first flagged over the weekend by game preservation account Does it play?, which posted on X that newly-purchased PS4 games now display a 30-day valid licence timer, most likely introduced in the March 2026 firmware. PS5 is affected as well, but instead of a timer, an error appears when a player tries to start a game.

The behavior points to a background check on newly-bought digital titles, with a 30-day grace period when the console is offline. After that window expires, the system requires a check-in to confirm the copy is legitimate before it will boot the game.

Numerous users have shared screenshots of chats with PlayStation's official customer support about the issue. The agents responding do not appear fully briefed on the situation, which has compounded the confusion among affected players.

Many fans have drawn a direct line to PS5's CBOMB in 2021, when consoles with a failed CR2032 coin cell battery lost their internal clock, and certain games stopped working. Sony eventually rolled out system updates that smoothed the issue over after sustained backlash.

I see no statement from Sony's communications team yet, and the support agents fielding inquiries are clearly working without internal guidance.

"Can't believe Sony hasn't said anything yet considering how much attention it's getting. Hopefully they say something soon so we can at least know what's going on."

— PlayStation fan

Does it play? wrote in the comments that a public response should not be expected.

"Not going to happen. When we discovered the CBOMB a couple of years ago, they even denied its existence publicly, only to fix it quietly a few weeks later. Don't expect them to say anything. They have known about issues with their new DRM implementation for weeks already... They basically have to patch it, or the backlash of reintroducing the old issue will be monumental."

— Does it play?

I think the 2021 playbook predicts what comes next: a silent firmware patch arriving a few weeks after the noise peaks.

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